Why I Travel

As I walk through the security line at the airport, I notice the guy in front of me, athletic, all button-down shirt and casual cargo pants, with black thick-frame glasses that turn colors as you move in and out of the light. He  carries nothing through security but a black, almost perfectly square cooler. I figure he must have some affliction and he needs his meds kept cold (I know from experience). But appearances and our own biases can be (and very often are) deceiving. 

He pulls a plastic bag out of the cooler, with three (3) frozen solid bottles of Deer Park water. He puts them in the TSA tray and leaves the cooler open. The TSA agent warns the screening guy that “frozen water, coming up!” and moves on to help me with my bag. The athletic guy moves along through the people scanner, chewing gum, completely non-chalant and well-possessed, not even blinking. No explanation. No fuss. Like he owns the world. 

The guy behind me says to the TSA guy: “Excuse me. Umm...What is that, exactly? You are allowed to transport water bottles through TSA if the bottles are frozen?” The TSA guy goes “Yes, sir! That’s right!” The guy behind me says “Well, I don’t agree with it, but wow! Just wow!”

In my mind, I say: “Sorry, buddy, your authority nor opinion is needed here. Move along.” But yes, I am wowed too. 

After I clear security, the first thing I do is google “can you take frozen water bottles through security?” and lo and behold, yes, you can! This just completely baffled me. I have been traveling consistently by plane since 1998 - for those hard of math, that is 27 years. I have counted 10 one-way airline trips (some of them with multiple flights) this year alone and I have never known of such a rule. This was a lesson ... 

As I continue my journey, I come to my gate and we’re ready to board. They tell us, as they often do, nowadays, that the plane is full and to make sure we board quickly and sit down immediately, not to block the aisles, you know ... the usual. Then, they call people by “zones” (some airlines board by groups, some by zones). They call First Class, then Zone 1, then Zone 2. We all wait. And wait. And not one person boards in Zone 1, nor 2. I have never seen such a thing. Again, ever, in all my travels are whole “zones” completely empty with “a full flight”. The gate agent seems totally OK with this, but we’re all looking around like “are they still at the bar or what?”. I am telling myself “this is going to be a trip of firsts, I guess?”. 

After I board (with my zone - I can’t recall what it was, but I am at the end of the darn plane again, zone maybe 7 or some such unlucky number; as a matter of fact, let’s not be ungrateful - zone “never” might be unlucky; the fact that I am on a plane at all is a plus), and after all the people are in their seats, the pilot walks all the way to where I am sitting and hands over a goodie bag to a lucky passenger on account that they are a “first-time flyer”. No, not with this airline but ever. Not sure how they know this? Not sure how or if they verify this, but there it is ... I am shocked. How has someone nowadays, especially in the very large America where people are so spread apart from their families, living in this huge country, never flown? This person is not a toddler either. It’s a mature man with a head full of white hair. They are totally shocked and embarrassed and they accept the bag with a chuckle and applause follows. 

Then, to make it even more unusual, the pilot walks to two rows in front of the man he just congratulated, on the other side of the aisle, and hands over a second goodie bag to another first-time passenger completely unrelated to the first one. Now, I am thinking I must be in a dream: there is not one, but two such rare specimens on my flight. What??? You live and you learn, as the cliche goes. 

As we’re preparing to take off, they make their little announcements and there is a new one for me: they tell us that video taking is “absolutely prohibited”, and this is not an “airline policy, but an FAA policy”. And I pause. Well, if video taping is prohibited, then how come TikTok (at least this is what I hear, since I am lucky enough to not be tethered with such a curse as a TikTok account) full of videos of flight attendants being slapped by or slapping passengers all over the world? Or did the policy come in response to such videos and is new? I am not videoing but I am taking pictures, so I figured I am not in trouble, but my goodness, frozen water first, no videos second, airline rules are moving fast, even for this mildly-frequent flyer... 

As I leave the plane on my arrival to the other end of my trip, at my final destination of Orlando, FL (a destination, I feel, that should require a passport, if you’re coming from anywhere else in the US, even), I head over to the ground transportation area to call an Uber so I can head to my hotel. I was a late adopter of Uber - have been using it for about 3 years - but I have used it on two continents and tried using it on a third one, but the Gods of the travel agency protected me from using it in Africa. Long story, for another entry. 

A cheerful gentleman called Jose arrives and I see a new disclaimer on my Uber app - that Jose is “recording this trip”. Hmm ... Video forbidden on the plane, but obviously running by default in the car transportation. I do not like surprises all that much, but this trip seemed to have it all. 

These are just a few examples from my most recent trip. And this is all to say that one of the main reasons I travel (other than to get where my life takes me) is to learn. Travel is almost a free add-on or bonus of new lessons about how you should behave in the world, how you should carry yourself among other humans. It teaches you how prepared you are to just be a human firing on all your cylinders, and being the best you can be among your peers. It builds tolerance and empathy - which are becoming somewhat endangered nowadays - but this new world we live in, try as it may, I would never, as long as there is breath in my body, want to lose them. 

Travel allows me to make my thoughts, my whole being stop chattering and opinioning and just listen and watch. Assess and propose corrections in my own path. Or not. Travel keeps my senses alert. There are so many things we must be present for in travel - you cannot space out and get lost in your doom-scroll of Instagram when the TSA agent, or a passport control agent demands answers from you. You are forced to connect with the person in front of you and think. Although I like to think of myself as a minimalist when it comes to consuming social media, I still hate when precious minutes go to nothing but mindless scrolling. Travel is not mindless. It is focused, character-building (remember that 20th century concept anyone?) presence. If you don’t have that (presence) while you travel, your very life might be at stake. 

I travel  because I need new energy, from the outer world, to replenish and recharge my own depleted body which becomes stagnant after a while just being enclosed in myself. 

My sister and I grew up “in the mountains”, we call it. We were city girls by birth - born and raised in the second-largest (by population) city in Romania - but for about 3 months every year we would live with our distant relatives in the Northern Carpathian Mountains, with no running water in the house, working tireless every day for our food which came from cows, sheep, chickens, or foraging for wild berries and mushrooms in the woods. This is how we learned physical, manual labor. Life on the land was very different from life in the city. In the city, we learned how to be pedestrians and how to ride with civility in a public transport vehicle. In the mountains, we learned how to listen to nature, and know dangers unknown to the city dweller - like the call of a wolf, or the scratch of a mouse in the attic eating through corn, or getting splinters out of our soft, city hands when we split wood in the woodshed behind the house to make fires every night to heat our rooms in the wood-burning stoves or in our water heater boiler every week for our shower.

Travel reminds me  a bit of those times - when we were forced to live in a completely new environment and we were absolutely forced to develop a new set of skills that would not have been developed otherwise. 

I travel because I know my perception of the world is biased. And I need hard proof for the truth. 

I travel because I am consumed by wanting to know the truth. Is the world really as bleak as the media and social sites claim? Are people as angry and evil? Are they truly hating one another? Travel shows you a different picture of that. Or certifies it for you. But you will never know for sure unless it becomes your experience. 

I travel for food and for new-ness. For taking myself outside of my cocoon of safety and forcing myself to react, to feel, to truly know, and to truly form an opinion. I travel for the surprise of it and its shock value as much as I travel to realize that I had the weirdness and diversity of the world within my soul all along. But I just didn’t know it. 

Travel forces you to think quickly and outside the box. And make do with what’s in front of you. 

Travel forces you to look deeply into your soul and assess - do you like what you see? Here, there are alternatives, would you like to reconsider? I never speak to myself more honestly than when I am traveling - because it forces me to be present and to stay awake and aware for the simple reason to be safe. It also forces me to be awake because everything seems to be new. I cherish getting lessons from everything that I open myself up for. 

I travel because travel leads me to books. And books lead me to travel. And books have been the one, only, constant in my entire life that has never disappointed. Boyd Varty’s Cathedral of the Wild led me to Londolozi which changed my life. Then, Londolozi led me to The Elephant Whisperer which enriched my understanding of human kindness and nature kindness and nature intelligence as well. And the examples are many from so many of my other travels: the innumerable books I read about English and American authors growing up that took me to England and later America where I found my soul, eventually. 

Travel brought me to wonders like the South African wild this year - and what a quantum leap that was! I emerged transformed only with a fraction of my old self from the African bush. It tapped into senses I didn’t know I had. Our over-technological suburban world dims those senses, or, in some cases, completely exterminates them. But going out of our comfort zone (something that is intrinsic to travel) allows our minds and sometimes even our bodies, to develop abilities that otherwise lay dormant or are in danger of becoming extinct because of our lack of need to use them. When you are called to react to things you don’t encounter every day - like a leopard on the hunt, or a pride of 9 lions completely wild, with no circus director to tame them in sight, or a river full of crocs opening their huge jowls at you, or even foods you have never seen but are called upon out of respect to try - you cannot help but learn new lessons and new abilities that you might not have thought you had. 

I turned 50 this year. I read a lot of thoughts on what and who you’re supposed to be when you turn 50 or when you reach your mid-life. Some people are told they are old. Some people fight this concept and feel young or do meaningful things to feel young. Because I live inside this 50 year old body, I feel just like I did when I was 10 or 20. 50 seems to me to be just a number. 

For me, the one thing I want to be or to do going forward (which has not changed just because my ID says I am not a different age), the only thing that I hope will define me in my next decade and beyond and always is the desire to continuously learn. To avidly and voraciously keep learning, with every day, with every trip, with every person or any other being that I encounter. Keep learning and becoming and changing and morphing into who I will eventually leave as my finished “product” on this planet, once my time is up in this realm. 

I cannot think how I would be able to learn without traveling. Just like I have said many times before, stopping traveling is like stopping to breathe for me. I felt like I needed a reminder to reassess why I do it - I do it to remain whole and to keep becoming. Becoming is my now and my future. That is all ... And that is all that matters ... 

One of the places that stays with me, 28 years later: the thermal pools of Pamukkale (or “Cotton Castle”) in South-Western Turkey - I took this picture after I climbed this mountain barefoot with hot streams under my feet on a 100F degree day in August 1997. 

Finding Home ...

There is a coming-home-kinda feeling about a lazy, early North Carolina summer. It’s like your heart is reset in its secret lodge in your chest and it’s back in rhythm. 

There is a strange saying around here that winter lasts for about 4 months, summer lasts for 6, and spring falls on a Tuesday. This feels, quite literally, like the truth! We have very little remembrance of true spring - the blooms are all we know about it. But the heat and most importantly, the humidity, this NC staple, is in a hurry to come back every year. We go from boots to thong flip-flops literally in one weekend.

The first sign of early summer is a blooming Southern magnolia

If you never spent any time in a subtropical climate, it is hard to describe the water in the air. The drips down your chin and under your arms just because you’re alive. You do nothing but sit there, looking at your hydrangeas and you feel a soft bead rolling down your temple. It’s only 10 AM and you can feel the hot air creeping in like a thief ... 

Kitties are lazier than usual, if such a thing is even possible, moving ever so slowly, for fear they’ll waste their energy in a hurry if they jerk around too much. Their eyes are blinking on a delay ... 

One of the must-haves in a Southern home is a screened-in porch, preferably in the back of the house, where no human traffic can bother you or disrupt your God-given peace. Lots of people dream of a house with a nice, deep front porch, but I like that just for the architecture. I would not think of ever using it to sit and take in the world. My world is that of the back yard, facing the woods, and allowing me no human pollution whatsoever - just birds, deer, bunnies, and squirrels. Maybe the occasional snake - because what is NC without its snakes?! 

On a day like today, I sit and melt away in the warm, wet air, and think about life, about what’s important, about where to next. If I learned anything in 50 years, it’s that humans will disappoint and fail, but through failure they will learn, rise again, and move on. I cannot measure my days in human victories or defeats. My beat nowadays is more that of nature, with its untainted beauty, permanence, resilience and steadiness ... Nature and that which is not human is what I seek for thy disappoint the least. 

If the most consequential trip of my life, my South African safari, taught me anything, it was that to find happiness is to be the most you you can ever muster. An impala never wants to be a lion, and a lion never wants to be a leopard. They are authentically who they are and they are the best at who they are because they wish nothing against their nature or against their natural grain. 

Human intelligence is our ticket to progress and to our demise ... Nowadays, I limit myself to what I know is true and permanent - gorgeous, massive hardwoods mixed in with Southern pines, whispering in the faint wind in my forest, finches, cardinals and sparrows having some sort of a quarrel over the shortage of bird seed, blue birds moving on after their first batch of babies have flown the coop, butterfly bushes in full-bloom waiting, patiently, for their residents to move in. 

About 4 years ago this landscape lady promised a scrawny butterfly bush she planted on a rocky hill behind my house will one day take over my yard. Every year since, I doubted her. I think it's finally time.

These are true, honest, solid things. There is no pretense, no lying, and no A.I. Just the pure, verifiable (but not needed to be) source of what is true ... I live for this. I cherish this. It's restoring ...  

Some days, it's hard to pick a favorite ...

I started this blog 20 years ago next month. I started it to document my travels, and I have been blessed with so many. I have lived a truly charmed life, with many opportunities to learn and open my eyes and my heart to a world I never knew would be possible for me ... 

But the one thing I have learned the most is that sometimes the most memorable journeys are not very far from just where you are. Not very far from your home or even from this chair, right here, where I type these words ... Not very far from the lazy kitten sprawled on the chair next to me ... It’s how you look at the world that makes the adventure and not always how many miles you travel ... 

For now, for today ... The world is warm, familiar, and soft, like an embrace of someone kind and trusting. The air is lingering, sticky and wet. The birds are getting lazier and lazier, judging by their fainting songs, as we approach mid-day. The sun is almost on top of me, I feel it and it makes my eyes squint a little, even under the roof of my screened-in porch. The fluorescent blue wasps are buzzing around and the branches are slowly nodding in the light wind. 

The skies are just waiting for some kind of signal to drop buckets on our heads yet again, despite the desperate attempts of the sun to peek through and shoo them away. 

It’s a quiet day in the country. The neighbor’s dog, suffering from some terrible separation anxiety, is the only chatterbox out there - disrupting the peace and the birds’ subdued symphony. He gets tired after a while and you hear him wail and yawn ... 

It’s another day in The South and, I am fairly sure that even if it’ll bring about change and even eternal pause to so many around the world, it will also bring a new day for those left behind. As life and physics will have it, the world still moves on. And I choose to move with it, when humanity allows, always waiting for the next chapter ... 

The Grand Canyon: The Yin and the Yang of The American West

All blogs have been past due this year. It's no one's fault but my own. I seem to find little time just to chill and write anymore, much to my heart's discontent and desperation. But delay no longer …

We returned to the Southwestern desert about a month ago. Lucky as I have always been, I have reasons to go back for work, and because work would be no fun without play, I plan to see a lot more of the desert when I embark on these mandatory trips. Although I love the trees of North Carolina, the rivers, lakes, and ocean, too, my soul craves the desert every so often. Just like you crave a sunburn in the dead of winter.

We drove down from Utah into Arizona, to see The Grand Canyon for the first time together. We made Page, AZ our base-camp, and we traveled from there to The South Rim the first day and to the North Rim the second day.

I have said this before numberless times: anyone should experience driving through the desert at least once in their lifetime. The open space, the desolation, the solitary confinement between you and God, the hopelessness of hitting nothing but red and dust and rock and short and spikey prairie grasses does things to your brain and your heart that you can only feel; I cannot put into words well enough to tell you what that feeling is like. Not to mention that it is probably different for each one of us. One thing that I know for sure is that the desert will never leave you untouched, unstirred to your core, and unmoved... It's one of those experiences that I guarantee will change your life, or at the very least your perspective.

Every time when I drive through the desert and I take it in through my eyes, and nostrils, and ears, my mind brims with its vastness and never-endingness. There is some similarity, in my head, between the vastness of the ocean and that of the desert. No wonder that they tell us that the desert was once an ocean … I don't find that impossible one bit.

Page is a little bedroom community, it seems, for folks vising the Lake Powell and Glen Canyon areas, or The Grand Canyon. I know one person who grew up there, but even he says “it was only temporary.” This is the land of The Southwest, where adobe houses and Mexican food are good friends, where Navajo Indians hail from, and where peachy-pink sunsets are born. If you're quiet enough, you can hear the many centuries of history this land endured, from the territorial wars with Mexico, to those of The White Men submitting The Indians. The thousand years of traditions that the Colorado washed by, most of them unknown and undocumented, but only undug and guessed at by curious, lonely, university savants.

As many millions or billions of people in the world, I had seen The Grand Canyon in many pictures, magazines, movies, commercials and the like. I had some idea of what it would look like. But of course being on the edge of this big gaping hole, seen even from Space, is different than looking at a postcard. The one thing that shocked me was the incredible difference between the South and the North Rims. They are truly as different as the Yin and the Yang of a Chinese symbol.

Grand Canyon -  South Rim 

The South Rim is what we saw first. This is the Yang, full of light, screaming bright red and orange hues, and flooded in sunlight. This is the poster child of Arizona, as we all imagine it. It was also the most crowded and busiest. As gorgeous as the landscape was, I would not be fair to not tell you, it was also the most touristy and somewhat cheesiest. If you looked past the human factor, it was as saintly and majestic of a cathedral as all the other God given beauties of the world!

Grand Canyon -  South Rim 

Our world got darker the second day, and not just because it started raining pretty much as you left our hotel in Page. Driving to the North Rim was incredibly similar to driving towards Yellowstone National Park or maybe Glacier National in Montana. We could tell we were much higher than when we were at the top of the South Rim, the day before: the pine forests and the ashes never seem to grow lavishly and freely under 8000 or so feet. Once we stopped at the Visitors' Center for the North Rim, it all seemed dead. Deserted and locked away for the winter. No facilities were open, and the handful of visitors were pretty quiet and reserved. Not the cackling crowd of the day before, on the Yang Rim. It was also cold. Bitter windy and cold.

Grand Canyon -  North Rim at Bright Angel Point

You cannot park right next to the rim in The North, like we could the day before. After you park you have to hike a ways through the parking lot, and then through trails to actually arrive at the end of Bright Angel Point and see the canyon below. The canyon walls here are closer to each other, and much, much darker: the landscape turns from the brilliant red and orange into dark greens and blacks in The North. It is as if you are not even looking at the same formation anymore. The Colorado is down there, you think, for you cannot see it, and the terraces slope down towards it, just like you would expect. Yet, the closeness of the two cliffs and the dark colors make you wonder if you are standing at the top of the Going to the Sun road in Glacier National, or truly at the top of The Grand Canyon.

On the North Rim you are in the midst of the Yin of The American Grand Canyon: dark, secretive, hidden, obscure and remote. If you ever saw The North Rim out of the context of its state, and were asked to place it in any American State, Arizona would never come to mind. There was a bluish – grayish haze in the air, maybe the earlier rain that day, or maybe the cold breath of the canyon vegetation. Who knows?! If the South Rim looked like a Florida naked body, scorched in the sun and ready for the next fruity drink, the North looked like an old, grumpy bear, heavy and dark, wanting to be left alone, back turned towards the world while entering its caverns.

There was a strange mystery about The North Rim, a secrecy that one could not decipher. There was an eerie silence and no sound except the breeze through the trees around us echoing into the deep, dark valley below. You could stand unmoved and think the world is dead around you. And then, a baby snake crossed our path reminding us the world is still very much alive, yet.

One thing you cannot help but wonder about when you oversee such ancient, wild, and untouched beauty is the passing of time. I always wonder what such land looked like millions of years ago – I am sure it was different, but I am also sure it was just as gorgeous as it is today. What I hope for the world is that we are smart enough to keep this incomparable beauty untouched, keep its secrets hidden, its trails crooked and trees afresh for the millions of people that will come after us.

What I felt at the top of this huge gap was lucky: to be alive, to be able to move and get there, to be able to see, and smell, and taste the cold, dry air of the desert. I also felt grateful and moved that I am equipped with the right emotional package to understand the depth of the world in front of me, literal, or otherwise.

I could write volumes about how I felt and what I saw and not a word of it would help you understand the same that I understood when I was there. All I can advise you to do is make time from your busy life and go experience it: drive through the desert, search for the spots the most hidden and let your heart listen; let your eye watch. And come back transformed.

My sister and I have talked for years about how we must go away for a while, periodically, remove ourselves from our routines and recharge our batteries. If we don't do this a couple of times a year, just go, hide, and listen to the wind in the trees or a river, or the sound of the ocean waves, or the sound of deep, unshattered silence under the starry skies, whatever … we would never be able to get out of bed and do our daily routines ever again. We would never be able to face this crazy world with all the bad, disappointing news in it. This was one of those purging trips! Recharged and life counter is now back to 0.

I will close with some wiser and more talented words than mine, just to give you a better description than I could put together of this wide-open, universe-famous, all American gem:

“It seems like a gigantic statement for even Nature to make all in one mighty stone word. Wildness so Godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of earth's beauty and size. . . . But the colors, the living, rejoicing colors, chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give us these? In the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured, as if the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and Sky." (John Muir)

Grand Canyon -  North Rim
Click the picture to view the entire album from this trip 

A Picture a Day. June 2018

The world continues to be crazy around us. Pain, and heartache. Pain for the sake of pain. Malice. Wickedness. Un-humanity ... Every day. Sadness and desperation. The awareness that evil is happening is too raw, too vivid, too real. And yet lots of us, me included, seem to be silent spectators, watching in disbelief. I wish we did more. I wish I did more. I wish I'd save at least one soul ... 

While all this is happening, time does not stand still. Summer has come and it's undoubtedly here, in all its glory. Simmering days and cool nights in the mountains (if you're lucky enough to get there, like I was). Hot dogs on the fire and evenings on the patio, with Gypsy perking his ears up for crickets and frogs. Roses bursting with color and smothered by bugs ... 

In this whirlwind of a world, I, once again, bury my head, of sorts, in the beauty around me, hoping and being grateful that at least there is some beauty still to be had. Still to be watched. Still to be shared. As I share with you now, my photo journey during the past month. 

Ever since I can remember, one of the things that says "summer" to me are mushrooms. Click this picture to see the whole album for June. Enjoy the ride! 

A Picture a Day. April and May 2018

What a whirlwind of two months!

After the winter which was way too long and unusually cold for The South, we finally watched everything come back to life: the trees, the many blooms, the creatures, ourselves ... 

We flew across the world and visited friends and family ... We visited places close to home. And sweeter than anything, we took in the world around us, at our door step. 

We're lucky and blessed and so grateful. 

Enjoy my journey during the past two months. In pictures. 

A carnivorous pitcher flower at the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, NC.
Click it to see pictures from April and May, starting with April 1st. 

When I Am in Love with the Mountains

You know, my least favorite day of the year, since I moved out West is that first day in late August, or could even be early September, when you go outside and you feel the first bite of fall. The air is cooler, the crisp is sharper, there is a chill down your spine and your exposed toes remind you they need to be covered: you got the wrong shoes on! 

It's a mean day, really, because as much as I hate the chill in the air, and the long sleeves, and the sweatshirts ... I love the mountains this time of the year. I love when the mountains and the trees are still deep, dark green (before they turn into the muted and deaf brown), and the prairie grass looks like the melted liquid balloon of the sun burst and poured all over it. The contrast between the gold and the green can only be achieved by one painter and one painter alone - and He lives up there, in the sky. 

Prairie grass and mountains outside our neighborhood

And speaking about the skies: that's another thing that makes me fall in love with the mountains, here in the West - and this goes for any season, really: the sunsets and the sunrises are out of this world eerie. The colors you see out here are impossible to find anywhere else - the deep reds and yellows, the crazy, tormented, confused and complicated clouds, moving at surreal speeds, and the height, this crazy Big Sky of the West that dwarfs you and makes you feel like an ant. 

September sunrise in my backyard

September sunset in my backyard

It's all love and helpless abandon. And all awe. And it's going to be imprinted in my brain, no matter how bad my Alzheimer's might get one day. No matter how far away from it all I will be ... 

I Have Found the Garden of Eden. Its Name is “Belize”

Our ship docked on Harvest Caye (pronounced 'key') - a private island that belongs to our cruise line, Norwegian. We walked the long pier to the island, in a melty hot early morning. The sea was calm, and the mangrove forest was unperturbed, hovering over the Caribbean Sea as if afraid to touch it. Only the tippy toes of the roots were barely scratching the crystal blue waters. Pelicans floated lazily in the cove and there was no wind, really. Just a calm, warm air, and quiet. The promise of a hot day. 

 

Pelican along mangrove forest, on the Caribbean Sea 

We walked around the small island, while we waited for our (smaller) boat to take us to the Belize mainland. Everything around us was pristinely green and tellingly tropical. The smell in the air was of blooms and perfume. Palm trees of all sorts of species and banana trees lined the narrow alleys in the park of Harvest Caye. The vegetation was robust and lush green. It was like a tropical or a rain forest – just green and exuding steam.

The thatch roofed bars and souvenir stores were elegant and clean. No sign of 'cheese' really, in Belize. All the touristy stuff is subdued and elegant. Never too much of anything, never anything too loud. The land and the forest rein supreme. Everything else is built within it, where it fits. There is a sense of peace and non-intrusion of the man made construction because of this layout.

Our boat took a while to come, so we waited patiently while listening to island music and rock and roll. We boarded and chose to be on the upper deck. Little did we know that we had the craziest toothless captain there is. He drove that thing, with 100+ tourists on board like a maniac, jumping waves 10 feet in the air, or so it seemed, with us rolling from one end of the benches to another trying to stay on the deck and not be flinged into the ocean. I was afraid for my life on that thing and how I did not throw up, with all the seasickness I usually feel, I have no clue. I think only sheer fear kept me surviving and wishing for another day on land. The only thing that rested my fears were all the other staff: they were laughing and were calm and composed, enjoying the ride as they were bouncing left and right and up and down on the boat. I figured, they knew the captain knew what he was doing and this was “business as usual.”

Once we reached the land, more thatched roof cabins and gazebos welcomed us. And more flowers. Flowers like I have never seen before – just growing everything like weeds.

We boarded a bus next, which was going to take us to a spice farm which is also a botanical garden. Our guide, Raf (short for Rafael), was a funny and intense man, who told us that there is no “yes” in Belize. The proper way to agree with someone was “Ya, mon.” Sounded a little Jamaican to me, but I could not argue with the guy who told us he is Mayan, and still believes in human sacrifice. So, 'Ya, mon!' it was.

Belize is an English speaking country, a former colony, so everything you see is in English. Belizean English sounds similar to Jamaican English. Just like the staff on the boat, all people we met were calm and always smiling. They have a laissez-faire attitude about everything. Nothing is ever a rush, nothing is ever a panic. It's a lull of a life, seemingly, all under an understanding smile.

Our bus trip took us through a rural area, very small villages, and lots of banana plantations. Raf told us it's mango season, so some people were selling mangoes on the side of the road, from thatch-covered tables transformed into ad-hoc booths. The roads were surprisingly great, nothing like the potholes we muddled through in Honduras. There are road signs, too, in Belize, and speed limits, too, unlike Honduras, as well. 

 

Banana plantation

The homes we passed looked very poor. Just simple abodes, and very rundown and old. The houses were made of brick and most of them were covered in stucco. Some were made of wood and the roofs were made of straw or palm leaves. Although it was a week day, there were lots of people just sitting around, looking at traffic and talking to each other. Mostly women and kids, and some older men, too. 

Through the villages of Belize

The banana plantations were interesting – they cover the bananas in bags, to make them grow faster, Raf said.

We arrived at the spice farm at around 11 AM or so. The heat wave was just about to hit. We felt like we were dropped in the rain forest – the vegetation was thick and sweating, wrapping us up in a blanket of warmth and dew. And the smell … oh, my word! I have never been in any place on the planet where the air smells just like when you bury your face in a bouquet of lilies or freesia, or any other flowers with a strong aroma. You did not have to look for a bloom to smell this. It was out there, in the open. With every breath, you inhaled perfume.

The Visitors' Center was a wooden construction – think log home meets mahogany island architecture. They had a few things for sale, but again, not overwhelming and not 'in your face' touristy kind of sales. People were quiet, subdued, welcoming and very happy looking. 

 

Beautiful Belizean wood carving in Harvest Caye park 

They boarded us again, this time on an open air tram, to take us through the spice farm. Our guide explained all the vegetation that we were seeing and how most of the farm was especially laid out, and how some of the plants and trees were not native of Belize. The American owners of the farm (from West Virginia) brought all sorts of spices and fruit trees from the Pacific islands, and India, and they planted them alongside local tropical fare. The tour through the farm was not only incredibly picturesque because of the beautiful vegetation, but it was educational, too, as the guide explained to us how certain plants grow and how they pollinate and how much work is really involved in extracting the spices from these plants.

We learned, for instance that the vanilla blooms are hermaphroditic – they contain both male and female parts – but they are incapable of self-pollinating. So, the farm hands have to uncover the female parts of the flowers with a toothpick and touch the male parts to the female parts, in order for the pollination to happen. This must happen within the first 24 hours of when the flower blooms, because after 24 hours, the flower dies. This ensures that a vanilla pod is created and the pod is the only part of the plant from which the vanilla extract is produced. No wonder that vanilla is the second most expensive spice (second to saffron). 

 

Vanilla bloom and pods

He picked a cocoa fruit for us and I was surprised to see that it looks much like a coconut. My husband tasted the pulp inside it (which is white) and he said it's a bit bitter but it does not taste like cocoa. It always amazes me how things we know and love today came to be: what made people think for the first time that which part of what fruit or plant is consumable? Just amazing. 

 

Cocoa fruit 

There were tons of trees that didn't produce but after so many years. Others that produced for 4-5 years and they were done after that. So much patience, so much effort, so much know-how to extract such coveted goodness. This is why it's doubly important that we do not destroy what is left of our green planet! It takes a long time to regenerate!

We learned that the pepper plant is much like kudzu: it's a vine, and the pepper grows in bunches, like grapes, on this vine. The white and black pepper come from the same plant – the difference in color comes from the different ways of handling the peppercorn: one leaves the ripe, outer layer on (the black) and one removes it (the white). 

 

Belize's many blooms 

We also found the black orchid, which is the national flower of Belize. This is by far the smallest and most delicate orchid I have ever seen in my life. I never knew before, but orchids grow on trees, much like a lichen, or a parasite plant. My brain still has trouble using the word “parasite” and the word “orchid” in the same sentence, but there you go. The black orchid is easily the most delicate bloom I have ever seen. The color is a deep purple, or … black.

In the rows where they didn't have fruit or spice trees and plants, they planted bushes and flowers “just for beautification”, they said. Just to make it “pleasant”: hundreds of rows of bougainvillea, azaleas, wisterias, lilacs, water lilies and lotuses. There was no corner without a bloom! The place was called “spice farm and botanical garden”, but being in the middle of many other forests, it seemed like part of the country and the natural landscape. It did not feel like something designed by man. It was a true garden of Eden, just wild and gorgeous. 

 

One of the many rows of bougainvillea 

My only complaint about the spice farm was that we did not get to spend a whole day there. After a couple of hours and right after our tram tour, we had to board the bus again for our return trip to our smaller boat which would take us to our ship. I could have gotten lost in the rows and rows of trees and plants and taken pictures till my camera card would have run out of space. It was a sad 'good bye' for sure. 

 

The sacred lotus flower 

On the way back, Raf thanked us for visiting his country. He spoke about the history of the country, about what makes them unique in Central America, about how they are a 'free country and free to do whatever they want'. He encouraged us to come retire there, where the retirement age is 55, taxes are low and everything is beautiful. He also told us that only Americans come and buy land in Belize. His family, who is Mayan, they don't believe in buying land, because we don't 'own' the land. It belongs to the earth, and we're just 'renting' from it. So they live on it, borrowing it, but they don't sell it, they share it with their families for generations. He pointed to the Mayan mountains in the horizon, and he said “the land between here and the mountains is all Mayan land, it belongs to the people.” There was an air of confidentiality in his tone, as if we were just let in a big secret.

We had very little time when we came back to the boat to do much of anything else. We were so exhausted from hopping so many means of transportation that day. But it was all worth it. To experience another land, so different than ours, and so mysterious and painfully beautiful and raw was humbling. To be so privileged to do it in peace and to be welcomed with respect by another nation is something we always take for granted when we travel abroad but something that we should always be grateful for. If we had gone to Belize 500 years ago today, I am sure things would have been significantly different.

 The national flower of Belize: the black orchid.
Click the picture for the whole album of this trip